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tv   The Communicators  CSPAN  February 22, 2016 8:00am-8:31am EST

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>> senator gordon smith, president and ceo of the national association of brought casters, welcome back. we appreciate you being here. >> thank you, peter. always a pleasure. >> the current fcc, five commissioners have been in place for a couple years and have gotten to work with them. how would you describe your relationship? >> guest: i think it is fair to say that this is proving to be one of the more partisan fcc
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is i have ever observed and i say that having observed many on the same committee. .. is the fcc structured, in your vie, in a way that fits the 21st century? >> guest: i think so, but i do think house commerce committee and others have come up with reform ideas that are probably
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long overdue. but, you know, again, i don't -- i'm not anxious to venture into telling them how to do their job, because my job is to get along with them and to work with them and try to make the broadcasting case as well as i can on the basis of good public policy. >> host: well, joining us today to talk about some of those issues that the broadcasters face is monthty today low of communications today low monty tayloe of communications daily. >> does the election time make a difference? >> guest: you know, the election year all the time consumes a lot of oxygen on the hill, and so the focus of the hill tends to be more focused on the ballot box than necessarily government agencies, at least that was my experience. i would say that chairman upton,
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chairman walden and chairman thune and ranking member nelson in the senate and ranking member pallone in the house as well as the judiciary committees bipartisanly have written things to the fcc that in my day would have gotten a different response. at least that was my experience, that it got different responses. but i think congress has been doing its job doing its oversight. how responsive the fcc has been to that pressure, sometimes yes with, sometimes no. >> we can at least sort of glimpse the end of chairman wheeler's term, you know? it's not over yet, but it's coming. how do you think he's going to be remembered as a chairman? what do you think can his lasting legacy's going to be? >> guest: well, i think he's a very able and very smart man, and i think he has very clearly
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in mind what he wants his legacy to be, and he is sort of no respecter of industry. he's going after that. and sometimes in the face of real congressional criticism. that's not necessarily a bad thing. it's what he, it's what his agenda is that he's pursuing. my own sense is that his legacy will largely be defined probably by the net neutrality vote but especially by the broadcast spectrum auction. he's put a lot of his chips on that, on that part of the table, and, you know, we're anxious for it to be successful, we're anxious for it to be over, we're anxious for -- to do our part. and i'm really kind of riding two horses in the circus on this, because i have many broadcasters who are very
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anxious for very good and logical business reasons wanting to participate. i have a lot of broadcasters who just want to be in business and be left alone and support localism and grow their businesses and look for new ways of, new platforms to get broadcasting content out there. so i, on the one hand, i have to support the auction which we do and i do, on the other i have to protect the remainder in the process, and we're doing our best to ride those two horses at the same time. >> the fcc hasn't released any statistics on the number of broadcasters who have signed up for the auction but, you know, being with nab, do you have any sense of the level of participation? is it enough on the broadcast side? >> guest: no one knows, and the chairman has said he's not going to release that. i have reason to believe that many broadcasters will look at it, again, for good reasons. how many remain in it is the open question. of course, that depends on the
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buyers' side. how many companies will come to the table. when you look at what we hear on the street, sprint is already out, verizon and at&t seem to be kind of vague about their intentions, and t-mobile is going to be a big player, but how big their wallet is, that's an open question. and what new entrants will come in? we don't know. and that's all -- all those cards are being held by chairman wheeler. >> host: why do you think it's secret? >> guest: i don't know. i suppose he should answer that question. >> could you talk about the vacant channel proposal? i know nab's fought really hard against that. why do you think the fcc is pursuing it so hard in the face of all that opposition, and do you think it's going to end up in court? >> guest: well, remember, part of the motive of the auction is to raise money for the federal government.
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a vacant channel, let's be honest, who gets the vacant channel? google gets it. google is a marketization company with $570 billion. it's the biggest company in the world. it's bigger than in -- than many countries. so if you're going to set aside a google channel for nothing, you have to ask yourself how is that in the interest, the intention of the auction legislation? >> broadcasters and broadcasting industry companies like antenna companies have said the repacking plan associated with the auction isn't taking into account the level of tower crews and the amount of infrastructure there is to support the auction and the repacking. is that still the case? has anything been done about that? >> guest: well, several things. first of all, if i were to come in with -- if you were an auto mechanic and i came in and said
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how long is it going to take you to fix my car and you haven't looked at it, could you tell me? of course not. it's self-answering, and that's what's happening here. we don't know how long it's going to take to do. if you tell me how many megahertz they're going to get and how many stations are going to be affected. if it's a thousand, i can promise you that just on the physical labor required that 39 months is not enough. if it's 200, yeah, maybe too much time. we don't know. unfortunately, the fcc has put 39 months in the regulation. but in their defense, every fcc commissioner to a -- in a house hearing was asked the question will you force the broadcasters off, if you get 120 megahertz and it's not done, will you force those who are not completed in the repacking to go dark, and every one of them, even chairman wheeler, said no. and i don't think they could sustain it politically if you
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said to a state you guys are off the air. i can't imagine, i can imagine because i used to sit in one of those chairs what my reaction would be if they told me all my broadcasters in oregon were off the tv set. that was a lawmaker's megaphone to their people. that's how you communicate with your constituency. and so they're not going to do that. but or nor do they know how long it will take until they know how many stations have to be repacked. >> host: just to go back a step, senator smith, are broadcasters excited about this auction? i know you gave a mixed view of that, some are, some aren't. but are they excited about the chance to, you know, benefit financially? >> guest: i think it just depends on every broadcaster and their balance sheet and how -- what kind of monetization they
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look to. how can they monetize their six megahertz of spectrum. how are they doing, and do they have any excess. have they got, you know, a couple of channels? maybe they can get rid of one. maybe they can channel share, and maybe they can use the infusion of capital. i think every one of them has to speak for themselves. and so i see my membership as really rather divided on who's going to participate and who won't. but many will. and many, particularly if they're public companies, they've got to answer to boards of directors and investors, and they have to look at this and look at it seriously. and i believe they are. but whether they -- you see, they have in the auction the ability to withdraw anytime. and they don't have to accept an offer that's made. so how many will be at the end, i can't say any more than tom wheeler can say. >> if it goes the way wheeler wantings it to -- wants it to with so many megahertz being
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cleared, are you concerned any position will be weakened because of less broadcasters? >> guest: what a fashion majoritying question, monty. we will be smaller. does that mean you're less important or more important? if something is in short supply and the public still truly values localism, one of the most popular telecommunication brands are your local tv stations. will they be less important or more important? i think the answer is we'll have a smaller band, but we'll actually be more important. see, many of the people who are going to bid on the auction, they want what we have. they want our airwaves. they don't want the responsibilities a broadcaster has like localism, like weather, news, sports. they don't want to do that. they don't want to set up a newsroom. they want the spectrum so that they can bill you more on your phone bill or any other bill that they might be able to direct to you through those
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airwaves. so my own view is this is a grand experiment, never been tried before. i'm happy for my broadcasters who want to somehow utilize it. but i have a duty also to protect those who want to stay in the business. and broadcasters tend to be real devotes to their industry and their cause of public service through providing local content and great network content. >> host: is there an impact to the viewer of a smaller spectrum? >> guest: well, if you're not crowded out, i mean, there's some channels i'm told may just go away. but what that will do is, i guess, make the programming scheduling a little more interesting on what remains. but i think it's possible there may be be some communities that have none, but that'll be very few because i think the public
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policy that underlies and overarches the broadcast license is, there are values that are still very valuable to the american people. you know, what broadcasters do, what newspapers do, the two of them together, they give people the civic information they need to live informed lives and to know what's going on in their community. and that brings up the ownership role loop. the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule, if anything, ought to be changed. because we're both in the journalism business, and we're both important to the people who live in every community in this country. >> host: it should be changed n your view, but will it? >> guest: well, i never really understood the quadrennial review. i never focused on it on the senate commerce committee. but i've been at nab now for six years, and they've missed it
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twice. haven't even done it. but there's a real crying need for that to be accomplished and changed so that for the sake of the first amendment and investigative journalism, it ought to be changed. >> speaking of the ownership rules, congress took a swipe at the fcc's rules on joint sales agreements and sort of forced a grandfathering provision in there. do you think the fcc has a responsibility to scale that rule back now that they know congress doesn't approve of it in some degree? >> guest: i would think they would, but i don't know that they will. it is to the everlasting credit of barbara mikulski and senator blount, senator schumer, senator durbin, congressman walden and pallone. these gentlemen on a bipartisan basis, i think, understood at their core that once the rules
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are set and broadcasters detrimentally rely on those rules, you can't change them post facto. and that's what the fcc did. and the congress said, no, you don't. so i would think they would take note of that. i mean, we were one of the few substantive writers to get through on the last resolution through congress. and, you know, i think that ought to say something. the president signed it. but, again, that's their business as to how they'll respond to it. >> host: senator smith, what's your current relationship, the broadcasters' current relationship with the capable companies particularly when it comes to retransmission? >> guest: there's always an economic tension this as you can imagine, pete i were. -- peter. they want to pay less, and we believe our content is worth more. we're paid 10% of the monies coming from that are disperse --
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disbursed through pay television. there's a disparity between the viewership and the compensation, and obviously, they would like to blame retransmission consent for the inflation in cable bills, but the truth is it has a whole lot more to do with the set-top box than it does anything to do with them and broadcasters in negotiations. >> you raised the set-top box issue, and the fcc's proposals and nprm are supposed to come up at the next meeting. nab hasn't really weighed in on that to my knowledge. broadcast content is a huge part of what they're selling. do you have a take on the set-top box issue? >> guest: i respect the fact that the chairman looking at something. chairman wheeler, if nothing else, he is to his great credit fostering competition. and he's looking at one of the
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real cost centers in the pay television industry. so i understand why he's doing that. i suppose as a consumer myself taking off my broadcaster hat, i'm saying, okay, who is the new gatekeeper? is it amazon? is it google? i don't know. if it's one of those, the question that i have is right now we have tough negotiations with directv and satellite or dish or with comcast and cable, time warner, you name it. those retransmission consent negotiations are happening all the time, and 99.9% of them end without any difficulty at all. but they're paying for the content. so if it quos to a new -- goes to a new set-top box with a different gatekeeper i guess my question, putting my broadcast hat back on, is, hey, how about my copyrighted material? are they going to sell ads on that?
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and if so, do they have no responsibility for what they then will take from broadcasters for nothing? so, i mean, i think there's some serious legal issues there. and we're paying attention. but this is something they're going to vote on. i think it's likely to go to rulemaking at some point, and we're going to be participants, pause we want to protect our -- because we want to protect our content. it has a value, and we're determined to protect that. >> speaking of negotiations, how worried are broadcasters that there's going to be a lot of changes to the retrans negotiation roles? >> guest: well, you know, again, this is a solution looking for a problem. i understand as good business people and as the pay tv colleagues are, they're looking to reduce any costs that they can. but, again, we're paid far less for our content than they pay
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themselves for their own content. and our content has a lot more viewership than theirs. so we think there's a disparity between compensation and viewer ship. but it is also true that our friends on the other side of that negotiation, some of them -- i think dish in particular -- really relishes when they can get an impasse with some small broadcaster and blow that up into some big deal. and they always time it around the super bowl or the oscars. as night follows day, that's going to happen. and then they go to the fcc, they go to the hill and say there's this huge problem. opening up in this proceeding, monfy, will probably -- monty, will probably result in more standoffs, more blackouts x. the best thing for them to happen is for them to close the proceeding quickly, and that sends the message that you should spend less time looking for special
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favors in government and more time negotiating in business. that's how it's supposed to work. that's how it has worked. >> host: gordon smith, what is the impact of a super bowl, of an election season on broadcasters? is it like christmas morning? >> guest: it is. i mean, let's be honest, it's -- football, the nfl has become kind of a secular religion in our country. [laughter] and half the country was tuned in at least, i suppose. it was just off the charts. sports have a great value, and they're very important to broadcasters. and i'm pleased to tell you that the broadcast picture has never been better. and while there's, you know, my members are also streaming and stuff like that, the architecture of streaming will never support that kind of viewership with the kind of quality we can cowith a good, clear -- do with a good, clear broadcast?
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so there will always be niches around it, but the big ca houston that is the big tv with a broadcast signal. >> host: so when it comes to commercial and people have dvr, etc., different devices for skipping over those commercials, what's been the impact of that? >> guest: well, it's a concern because most of the revenue to a broadcaster is still advertising based. retransmission consent is growing, but it's still small relative to advertising. so if the people who, like dish, who have the hopper want to say, well, let's undercut 85% of the broadcasters' revenue stream, that's a problem. because we want to be able to say to the advertiser, look, we'll deliver the eyeballs, and that'll produce customers for you. and if they give people the option just to skip it, some will. in the super bowl, however, people tune in for the ads almost as much as for the game, and they're pretty amazing.
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but advertising still remains central to the the revenue stream necessary to great content from networks and to supporting localism and journalism in every local community. >> senator, can you talk about the progress of the update to the 3.0 standard? do you -- is it moving in a way that we'll get it adopted by the time of the repack? is there a transmission plan? >> guest: you know, at this juncture nab is very interested in what it can do and the promise is that it'll allow members to do with even less spectrum even more than they do now with what they have. mobility, ip interoperability, still multicasting, channel sharing. it has great promise, but there's no finished standard yet. and is so before i -- and so before i voice an opinion other
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than a hope, i want to see the final product, and then we'll know, then we'll take it to our television board. and it's really our members who would have to make that investment. but it looks promising, but the proof's in the be pudding, and the transition is difficult. >> host: are there issues that you and michael powell at ncta or gary shapiro at cta agree on and all work for the same goal when it comes to congressional issues or fcc issues? >> guest: yeah. it seems like we're often on different sides, but there are many things where we're on the same page. it goes issue by issue. but i have, i have high regard for both, and i have a particular affection for michael powell. he's a -- i was on the senate commerce committee when he was the chairman. i thought he was superior, superb. i love his dad, privileged to work with colin powell.
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he's just a remarkable guy just like his father and mother. >> host: has nab taken a position yet on net neutrality? >> guest: we haven't. some of my members are for it, some are against it. i'm with my friends. [laughter] it's one of those issues that i know i've debated back and forth. i can make you a good case for it, i can make you a good case against it. >> host: but nab does not have a dog in that race at all. >> guest: no. and i don't understand why the others do. >> host: monty tayloe. >> this is a radical topic shift, but there's been concern about the fcc closing enforcement field offices and keeping up with pirate radio. is the fcc doing enough about pirate radio right now? >> guest: well, they have a proceeding on it, and we salute that. i mean, we, you know, it just undercuts legitimate, licensed, legal radio and, obviously, we
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want -- we don't want that. but whatever they can do in the future to identify it and eliminate it, we think that's important. i do want to salute on a.m. revitalization the tremendous efforts by commissioner clyburn, commissioner pai in particular who led that new. it gives the a.m. radio station a window to apply for f.m. translators to keep in business and keep listeners. we're very grate the canful to the pcc -- grateful to the fcc for that ruling. >> host: 20th anniversary of the telecom act of 1996. is it time to update it? >> guest: ing yes. and as i recall, though i was not in the senate when that passed, it preceded me literally by a year, i believe, i think the difficulty with telecom acts is they take a long time because they have the tendency to pick
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winners and losers and overhang any future telecom rewrite with issues like net neutrality, issues like set-top box. things on which lots of capital flows one way or the other. so they become very, very difficult things to do. and the other problem with telecom legislation is it's the complexity of it. and the constant change in technology. it seems like as soon as they get it done, the technology's moved on, so most of it's irrelevant. that said, what i like about the idea of a telecom rewrite is it will look at things in a holistic way. but the more holistic you look at it, the more difficult it becomes to make it into law. my guess is telecom rewrites, there'll be more rifle shot than holistic.
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they're just difficult to do because you have big players, big interests who will come and make their case. >> host: given your past in the senate and your current position as president and ceo of the national association of broadcasters, what can realistic -- and this bounces off a question monty asked earlier -- what can realistically we expect to be legislated in the congress that deals with some of the issues? >> guest: this year? >> host: yeah, this year. >> guest: not much. and the reason is because it's a presidential election year with. it was my experience, peter, that in an election year -- and doubly so in a presidential year -- politics trumps politics. politics trump policy almost 100% of the time until you get to the lame duck. and then the lame duck's dynamics are determined by who wins and who loses.
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and so we're going to be watching for everything and be prepared to make our case all year long so that when it gets gets to the lame duck and the conferees and the leadership are cutting the cards, that we, we're going to do the best we can to protect our members against anything that might come up. and i can't even predict to you what that would be at this point. >> host: monty tayloe, we have one minute left. >> a few years ago at the nab show wheeler suggested concentrating online and channel sharing and making money off the auction, and he was hugely criticized by the people at the show for that plan. isn't that kind of what's happening though? was wheeler wright about that? >> guest: -- right about that? >> guest: the criticism is we're some of the biggest online players already. we're already doing that. and in terms of channel sharing, a lot of that is going to depend on each individual station and what kind of deals that they can
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structure. all that'll happen anyway. and so he was kind of saying why don't you do what you're doing. and that was the response, was because, check it out, we're already there. >> host: senator gordon smith, president and ceo of the national association of broadcasters, and monty tayloe of communications daily where he is an associate editor. thank you both for your time. >> guest: thank you. >> thank you. >> c-span, created by america's cable companies 35 years ago and brought to you as a public it service by your local cable or satellite provider. ♪ ♪ >> i am trying still to decide which candidates to support. i'm trying to decide between the governors who have executive experience or some of the other candidates like mark cruz and
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marco rubio. >> and the most important issue to me is national service. there are more than five million young americans that are ready to step forward and serve their country for a year with programs like americorps, the peace corps. >> governors from across the country have been meeting here in washington over the weekend for their annual winter meeting, and today is the last day. national governors' association chair, governor gary herbert of utah, will deliver remarks at the closing session today. this is live on c-span2. [inaudible conversations]

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